Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Real Update

Okay so I promised I would upload the ultrasound photo. I didn't. My excuse? I'm pregnant people, and by the time I get home at the end of the day it is all I can do to concoct some sort of dinner for The Boy and myself, feed us, and get it cleaned up. I'm going to segue here for a minute. By far the hardest time of the day for me is the hours between like 4:00 and 8:00pm. I usually get home sometime around 4:30ish and I seriously HAVE to lay down until my mom gets to my house with The Boy. There really isn't any other way around it. Yesterday I had to check in on a client and then drop off my prescription at the pharmacy (which of course had to be some compound pharmacy so it was WAY further away then it needed to be...) and I got home around 4:00pm. I was supposed to do some work for a client that I do out of my house, but there was seriously no way it was going to happen. In the car ride on the way home I was chatting with a friend on the phone and I realized I didn't even have the energy for our conversation. I hung up when I arrived home and went in to lie down "for just a few minutes" before I went to work. I was shaking and nauseous and could barely make it to my bed to lay down, shove about 6 saltines in my mouth and some water and wait for it to give me energy. Yeah, it didn't. When my mom got there around 5:00 I was still laying there. And when I stood up to try and function? I feel like I have the flu. You know that feeling where you are so dizzy that you aren't sure if you can make it to the bathroom and you have so little energy that you consider crawling because it might be easier? That is how I feel. And yet I have a manic little 2 year old running around like a crazy child. And I have to get up and somehow come up with some food for both of us. Then I have to actually COOK the food, set the table, sit at the table and eat, and then...god help me, clean it all up. I swear it almost kills me every single day. By the time I get The Boy in bed at night, I literally lay on the couch and watch ONE show from my tivo and then go to bed. It is all I can handle right now. I may sound like a huge cry baby and that is not my intention. I am merely documenting this so that about 10 weeks from now when I am in the bliss of second trimester and telling people, "it really wasn't that bad..." I can look back and know that yes, it really WAS that bad.

But about the appointment. They sent me straight into a room with an ultrasound machine and the nurse lubed up the "condom" like thing right away. I said, "Am I getting an ultrasound today?" all innocent-like. She said that yes, it is their procedure to always do an ultrasound on the first visit so that they can tell how far along you are and get an accurate due date. Man, I wish I had known that going in, but YAY!! So I hear my nurse lady coming down the hell yelling, "OH MY GOD!! No one told me!" and she opens the door and runs in and gives me a big hug. "No one told me you were pregnant! This is fabulous! Holy crap!" I smiled and reminded her that I had told her last time I was there (to get a list of things to test donor boy for) that I was about to start trying. She replied with, "Yeah, but who knew you were fertile myrtle?" Ah yes, that familiar phrase that still kills me. Fertile myrtle. About ME. Okay, I won't go into that again. So we finally got down to the ultrasound and there I am, feet in the stirrups, looking straight ahead just waiting for her to make mention of whatever she sees on the screen. She's searching around with the dil.do cam and doesn't seem to be able to find anything. I glanced up at her face and she had a concerned look on her face and was just rooting around down there. Finally she goes, "Oh! I had it on the wrong screen!" and switches something and says, "There's your little peanut." Good lord, woman! Talk about stress. But at that point I looked up and I saw the blob on the screen. I could see something, but I couldn't see a heartbeat. Nothing was moving. It was just a blob. I said (probably quite frantically), "Where's the heartbeat? I don't see a heartbeat?" She said, "Oh, it's there...let's just zoom in..." and she did. And then I saw the flickering. I saw the little twinkle. I think I exhaled for the first time that entire morning. Then she said, "do you want to hear it?" and she took these two little lines and put them around the flicker and pushed a button and there it was. That fast little beat. She only left it on for a couple of seconds, but it was enough to make me cry. She said, "around 150 BPM I would say...perfect." And then she moved on to measure it. She pointed out the yolk sac and said she couldn't include that in the measurement and clicked the little things and said "You are measuring at 7 weeks, 6 days." How does that compare to your calculations? I told her I was supposed to be exactly 8 weeks that day. Pretty damn good. She then printed me out a picture and we chatted about how deathly I have been feeling (I was eating saltines as we were talking) and she told me about the new drugs that are supposed to help without rendering me unconscious. She wrote me a prescription, sent me next door to the lab to give them 5 vials of my blood and told me how happy she was for me and that she would see me in 4 weeks. A pretty perfect appointment if you ask me. Now, if I can just figure out a way to LIVE through the next four weeks, we will be in business!